As the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end,” so it’s time to review the last half of the third and final season of Solarbaby’s epic Star Trek: Armada animated series.

When last we saw Captain Kirk and his crew, the Enterprise was embroiled in a war between the major players in the Alpha Quadrant, including Starfleet and the Klingon Empire, and forces led by enemies from the I’Rosak Quadrant, including the Phallusians (little green men) and the Hydra (humans with an insatiable desire for conquest).

Thanks to the beating it’s taken from a Hydra vessel, the Starfleet flagship has lost its power and become a sitting duck in front of a huge alien ship until a Phallusian ship arrives and moves between the vessels.

After hearing that the “superweapon” given to them by the Phallusians essentially repaired itself, Kirk orders that the Enterprise take out the shields on both the Phallusian and Hydra vessels, and once that’s done, landing parties arrive on the enemy ships, where Kirk demands that they surrender, and they do.

Back in the I’Rosak Galaxy, Hydra ships prepare to invade the Alpha Quadrant until the mysterious Hierarchy forbids such an attack without explaining the decision.

Meanwhile, the Romulans start firing on a Hydra ship, but the attack proves unsuccessful when the telepathic aliens begin ordering the Romulans to take out the vessels in their own fleet.

When Starfleet learns of the Romulans’ plight, the admirals offer to send humans onto their vessels since the Hydra cannot control Earthmen’s minds. That tactic helps the Tholians to regroup and enable the Gorn to enter the battle.

Soon after, both Starfleet and Klingon vessels join the fight, and the Hydra Behemoth begins to falter against such overwhelming odds.Inside the Phallusian vessel, the Enterprise arrives at the aliens’ home world.

Kirk, Scotty and Sulu then take a shuttle to the world’s surface, where they encounter Admiral Dasher, a member of the Hydra Hierarchy.

Inside the Phallusian vessel, the Enterprise arrives at the aliens’ home world. Kirk, Scotty and Sulu then take a shuttle to the world’s surface, where they encounter Admiral Dasher, a member of the Hydra Hierarchy.

While Dasher and a Phallusian meet with Kirk aboard the Enterprise, Spock begins to recover when Lola enters Sickbay, and he uses a mind touch to gather startling information from her., The Vulcan then hurries to find the captain to tell him what he’s learned.

Kirk is surprised when Spock enters the room, but he’s even more amazed when he learns from his Vulcan officer that “Lola is a Phallusian spy who has been coordinating the war from the beginning.”

When Dasher refuses to accept that information, Spock initiates a mindmeld to convince him of the truth.

When Nurse Chapel asks if the half-human, half-Vulcan officer is all right, he replies that his human side adapted to overcome the thoughts Lola placed in his mind.

“For the past 10,000 years, the Hierarchy has been supplied with purple root in vast quantities,” Spock states. “The Hierarchy have consumed most of the purple root themselves, giving them immensely powerful telepathic and telekinetic abilities, even beyond the fabled Betazoids.”

“This has to stop,” Kirk responds. “Enough people have died because of the Hierarchy’s greed for the purple root.” He then calls to the Bridge and orders Sulu to scan for the purple root plant on the Phallusian planet and then “lock phasers and destroy it all.”

“You can’t do that,” Dasher growls. “Who do you think you are?”

The Hydra then renders everyone in the room unconscious with a telepathic burst before vanishing off the ship and materializing aboard a small vessel and heading for the nearest jump gate.

Back on the Hydra vessel, McCoy states that he needs access to the ship’s ventilation system to spread his cure, but instead, Bones pumps knockout gas throughout the vessel and manages to inject himself with an antidote.

He then enters the main control room. “Let’s see if we can get this oversized eggplant moving,” he grumbles before managing to pilot the ship through a jump gate.

However, McCoy has picked the same gate as Admiral Dasher, and the ships collide on the Alpha Quadrant side of the transport device, starting an energy buildup that will destroy the planet below and everyone on it.

Just then, seven Hydra ships emerge from the jump gate and begin firing on the Enterprise and the captured vessel. In response, Scotty beams the Starfleet vessel inside the larger ship and escapes through the jump gate before the enormous explosion obliterates all vessels in the area.

After the Enterprisereturns to Federation space, Scotty tells Kirk someone has arrived who’d like to talk with him.

“Well, that’s the last time I ever make a house call, Jim,” McCoy says as everyone on the Bridge celebrates his return.

Spoiler Alert: If you’d rather watch the fan film’s ending yourself, skip down to the link at the end of this article. If not, just continue reading.

When the Enterprisearrives at Earth, the vessel’s phasers join the fire from the other ships. Once the Hydra Behemoth’s shields are destroyed, crew members from the attacking fleet beam aboard and begin dueling with the Hydra agents.

Once the captives have been beamed to Starfleet Headquarters on Earth, the structure of the enemy vessel begins to fall apart, and the fleet of attackers back away in time to see the Behemoth blown to bits.

With the war over, Kirk is dragged before the Federation Council to face numerous charges from disobeying orders to withholding alien technology. The admiral states that because the captain helped save the quadrant, he decided on a special punishment that Kirk would live to regret.

The Enterprise is to be decommissioned under the command of an admiral, and Uhura decides to sit in the center seat before it’s too late to do so.

When the admiral arrives, it’s Kirk, and he says that instead of being decommissioned, the Enterprise will undergo a major refit with the crew staying aboard to help with the project.

But after going through such an emotional ordeal, Spock decides to return to Vulcan to undergo the Kohlinar ritual, and the remaining Hydra and Phallusians are sent back to their own quadrant to oversee the rebuilding of their societies.

Once the shuttle is through the jump gate, Kirk orders Chekov to destroy it, which he cheerfully does with a spread of photon torpedoes.

After Kirk takes one last walk around the Enterprise Bridge before giving up command of the vessel, the ship is towed to drydock, where it’s refit to the movie version of the starship before returning to its mission of boldly going where no man has gone before.

With my animated Clint Eastwood hat firmly in place, it’s time to review the conclusion to this epic series.

The Good: One of the things I loved about the end of Armada was the fact that it set up the plotlines from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Continuity, thy name is Armada.

Also, the use of voices and animation improved with every episode to make this series one of the best Trek fan productions I’ve ever reviewed It was certainly worth the wait from the beginning to the exciting conclusion. Well done, Solarbaby!

The Bad: Maybe it’s just me, but every time a female character spoke, it seemed as though her dialogue was spliced together instead of being done in a single take. On occasion, it made me feel a bit comfortable but it may have been the only way to get the voice work into the episodes. Nothing dramatic, just something that could have been handled a bit more smoothly.

The Ugly: It’s definitely ugly that Armada has come to its conclusion, but Solarbaby is already hard at work on a new project called Star Trek: Ascension, a series set in the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine era that she’ll use Flash animation and her own images to produce. For more information on this, check out theinformation posted here.